1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to enterprise applications used in organizations. In particular, the invention relates to a system for integration, management, and coordination of activities of customers accessing an enterprise through a plurality of applications and/or touchpoints.
2. Description of the Background Art
Enterprise applications are tools that are used by companies and organizations to improve their productivity and efficiency, thereby increasing the profitability of the organization. These applications use information that is collected from customers or employees through various sources such as campaigns, web inquiries, leads, delivery, services and support. During the course of normal business, a company, through its systems and employees, interacts regularly with its customers. These interactions can be used to build up relationships with the customers. The information gathered from the employees and customers can be used for acquiring as well as for retaining and growing relationships. This helps in improving customer service while maximizing profits for an organization.
Several enterprise applications that help a company manage customer relationships have been developed in the past. These applications mainly collect information from customers through interactions during a specific function like sales, after-sale service, and surveys. This information is analyzed for specific improvement in the company's processes, applications, products, contacts and the like.
A typical enterprise application maintains a database, which is updated whenever any information is received. Based on the information, the application performs a desired task. Furthermore, the stored data is analyzed to extract vital indicators of customer requirements, product alterations and the like. There are various enterprise applications that exist in the industry. Examples of such applications are Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) and others. Different applications need different kinds of information to achieve the desired results.
In large companies there are many departments, different applications and touch-points, which handle customer and other relationship data in various forms. Customer data can be in the form of emails, telephone calls, faxes and web interfaces. Furthermore, these data can originate from physically different locations. Therefore, a cohesive, intelligent and consistent communication system is advantageous to collect and assimilate data and make it available to all the applications that require customer-related data. This would allow the employees and systems of a company to intelligently and proactively coordinate customer-related activities.
There are several approaches that are being currently used in the industry to achieve coordinated customer activity. One of the traditional approaches is a central database approach. In this approach, a large composite database, or Operational Data Store (ODS), is used. An ODS is an integrated, subject-oriented, detailed store of data used to support operational processing, information gathering and decision-making. Contents of the ODS are updated through the course of business operations.
However, this approach has a number of shortcomings. Firstly, it does not allow bi-directional integration of business processes and rules essential to inform all parts of the enterprise of current events and interactions. Secondly, the scaling of an ODS is limited to the size of the server, thus adding to the complexity of operation in case of increase in the amount of data that needs to be handled. Thirdly, the use of an ODS requires migrating information from other operational systems on a bulk-load basis with an Extraction, Load, and Transform (ETL) process. This increases the process time and also interrupts the operation of the system. Fourthly, an ODS does not provide sub-second query response time for data request from applications that require real-time use. Fifthly, an ODS is inflexible because it provides a set database relational model that cannot easily accommodate new applications, touch-points, or data sources.
Another approach for coordinated customer activity is a central data model approach. This approach involves consolidation of different corporate applications and databases into one vendor's application data model. However, this approach has some limitations. Firstly, since data models are specific to applications, consolidation of different applications and databases is complex. It requires extension of existing data models, which adds complexity to existing applications and makes upgrades and migrations almost impossible. This further requires extensive amounts of data access, batch data movement, and replication, thereby making the approach very expensive. Secondly, since such an approach requires a common data model, it must be put in place and agreed upon by multiple organizations; this can be difficult to accomplish. Therefore, the approach requires a considerably longer time to become operational. Thirdly, the data models used in this approach are very difficult to change once they are locked in place. This approach also lacks the ability to perform data reconciliation, which is the ability to match and correlate unique IDs across source systems for discerning and linking each unique employee, partner, or customer.
Another approach for customer activity coordination is a distributed query approach. Distributed query tools are valuable for defining ad-hoc queries and providing an instance of data across systems. This approach takes into account the data between multiple systems. However, there are many limitations to such an approach. For example, it does not provide a way to update the multi-source view without performing another query. It also fails to support data reconciliation and complex merging of relationship data across overlapping and inconsistent schemas. Additionally, this approach tends to put workloads on various applications that access the customer data that often exceed acceptable service level limits. This approach also fails to apply business rules to provide context on desired user actions.
Yet another approach for customer activity coordination is a distributed publish-and-subscribe event approach. This approach involves usage of Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) vendors and process tools. This approach essentially takes into account the data of a customer, partner, channel, or supplier, between two points of interactions, on a point-by-point basis. Between the two points, EAI may use a common object, which is transient, to map and transform the differences. The EAI approach does not provide a mechanism for data reconciliation. Also, in this approach, the process misses the complete context of a profile as relevant to all the other applications and touch-points that may have data or events significant to that particular transaction. Additionally, this approach is also not very efficient in providing comprehensive and manageable customer data. Further, the EAI approach does not provide a storage location, persistent or virtual, where a query can be run to return data from multiple sources.
A method for customer activity coordination is disclosed in WIPO publication number 02/063491 A2, entitled “Enabling a zero latency enterprise” and assigned to Compaq Information Technologies Group, Inc. (Cupertino, Calif.). This method tries to enable all the communications between various entities of the enterprise in real time. This method integrates enterprise-wide data, applications, business transactions, operations and values. Data related to real-time operations of the enterprise are loaded into persistent storage, known as an Operational Data Store (ODS). The information is synchronized across the enterprise using EAI tools. Rules and synchronization policies are implemented in a hub with the ODS. With these rules and policies, any updates communicated to Zero Latency Enterprise (ZLE) hub from any application across the enterprise can, via the hub, bring about information synchronization in all other applications across the enterprise.
This method lacks the ability to reconcile data on real-time bases hence making any synchronization of data unreliable. Additionally, the ODS, as also described earlier, has limited scalability as data is replicated from the source systems requiring a vertical scaling of the database and the server hosting it. Moreover, since all the information is aggregated in the central repository (ODS), the system is prone to a shutdown on account of failure of the ODS.
There are several tools that utilize one or more of the above approaches for particular applications. CRM tools are the most widely used tools for customer activity coordination. WIPO publication number 01/15030 A1, entitled “Customer relationship management system and method” and assigned to Compudigm International Limited (Wellington, New Zealand), is one such exemplary CRM solution. This system provides a customer relationship management system including a memory in which an interaction database is maintained. The data in the interaction database represents interactions between customers and merchants. The data is retrieved based on a set of criteria. The system uses one central database for all customer data.
However, this approach has certain shortcomings. Firstly, the system uses a single database, limiting the scalability of the system. Secondly, the system does not provide for real-time updating and availability of customer data.
Besides the above-mentioned shortcomings of different approaches used in customer activity coordination, there are several other complexities involved in any attempt to perform customer activity coordination. One is the existence of duplicate data for the same customer. One customer might be represented in the database at multiple locations, creating problems in coordination. This duplication of data can be a direct consequence of the use of multiple systems and communication channels by the customer. Moreover, different organizations, lines of business, applications, and touch-points within the enterprise can add to the fragmentation of the data pertaining to the same customer. Therefore, it becomes difficult to make available a composite view of the customer.
In light of the drawbacks associated with the existing art, there is a need for a system that can provide integration of business processes and rules that are essential to update all parts of the enterprise of current interactions. There is also a need for a system that provides faster and more efficient transfer of information across the enterprise. Further, there is a need for a system that provides real-time updating of information related to a customer. There is also a need for a solution that can deal with duplicate data and has the ability to reconcile and maintain customer data integrity while merging and referencing data for the same customer. There is also a need to capture a customer's activity over multiple channels or applications and leverage the most recent and relevant customer activities at the next interaction point.